Mobile Device Applications Testing Tips

Application development for mobile devices is a fast growing phenomenon.

All these users of mobile devices, like iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone 7or even eReaders like the Amazon Kindle, create a never-ending demand for more and more unique and useful mobile applications.

The arena for these new applications is vast, from the healthcare world, where patients can now practice self-care directly on their smartphones1, to social networking, where 55% of mobile internet users mostly use their devices for social networking and emailing.

Users want mobile applications to be simple and fast. Just one nagging bug or usability issue can spoil the entire experience. And with so much competition in this new space, if users don’t have an excellent experience with your application, they will switch to a rival product faster than you can say “There’s an app for that.”  Vendors simply can’t afford to go to market with an application that might have a critical bug or usability issue. Yet surprisingly, there is no previously existing comprehensive guide on how to test the particular complexities of mobile device applications. The strategies presented here are intended to highlight some of the areas where the testing of mobile device applications differs from testing desktop or regular web applications. It is important to plan a test

strategy that is mobile-specific, or you may overlook crucial areas of testing like how network connectivity (or lack thereof) affects your application, how screen resolution and orientation changes can spoil a users whole experience, and whether your application jives with what users of a particular device have come to expect.

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We can divide the testing into four main areas:

1. User Interface Testing

2. External Factors Testing

3. Stress Testing

4. Security Testing

1. User Interface Testing – mobile devices have unique user interfaces like smaller screens that can be re-oriented, touch screens and soft keyboards, and navigation methods like hard keys and trackballs.

2. External Factors Testing – mobile device applications must also contend with interactions and interruptions from other device features like various network connection types, SD cards, phone calls, and assorted device settings.

3. Stress Testing – mobile device applications have much less overall device memory and power available so must handle themselves very efficiently.

4. Security Testing – mobile device security will become more and more important as the user base grows, so it is essential to test the security of your mobile web applications, sensitive data storage, and how your application behaves under various device permission schemes.

 Functional testing is excluded from specific mention because that type of testing can be carried out in the same way you would perform it on any other kind of application. Be aware that testing strategies will depend on the software requirements of the application. Not all testing strategies described in this document apply to all applications. But, as you are creating your test plan, please take the suggestions into consideration.